Well, looka there

Ehud Olmert, former PM of Israel, came to give a lecture at the Harris School of Public Policy at my university a few days ago. I passed the protesters outside, but I didn't realize there were disruptions inside the lecture hall as well:



Detailed coverage from Electronic Intifada here.

I was really surprised by this, frankly, as well as by the size of the anti-Olmert protest. UChicago, at least in its more visible aspects, tends to be a pretty politically conservative institution and very pro-Israel. On the other hand, of course Mearsheimer does teach here, and our Center for Middle East Studies is fantastic academically and politically much more varied--if anything it probably would lean toward the Palestinian end of things.

The student body, particularly the undergraduates, tends to be much more liberal than the school's reputation, but for the most part the pro-Israel students tend to be much louder and more visible than the other side. Partly it has to do with the very large contingent of fairly conservative Jews here: while by no means are all Jews pro-Israel, I've met many more people here who have spent extended time in Israel or have direct family connections to it than I ever have before in my life (though I'd say the proportion of Jews in the University population is about the same as the area I grew up in).

Partly, it seems from the EI coverage that the protest was augmented by area activists and students from other universities, but nevertheless it was an unusual and, frankly, welcome display of the other side of the debate. It gets tiring sometimes only seeing one side represented.

According to EI, this is the latest in a series of protests across the US, which is an interesting data point in terms of how Americans view Israel's actions of the last few years. It confirms the prevailing notion that Americans in general have lost some patience and goodwill toward Israel, something that has been generally felt among people I've talked to but usually unconfirmed by any real data. (Not that this is the equivalent of a major study with, you know, statistics, but it's still a data point.)

I'm not sure how I feel about the level of disruption of Olmert's actual speech. I'm sure I would have been massively uncomfortable had I been there, but that's sort of the point, isn't it? I don't know. As always with this issue, I remain divided and able to see both sides of it.

Good grief, it never ends

It's probably a sign of having chosen the right institution of higher learning when seemingly every third intellectual giant one runs across is either a graduate, a student, or a former faculty member of said institution.

Turns out Larison is a grad student of Byzantine history here at UChicago.


What I am not going to do is turn into a massive creeper. Just so that's clear. To everyone, including me.


Seriously, though, this is a way bigger deal to me than, oh, Mearsheimer (meh) or Friedman or even Obama (although it's hard to compare because with Obama there was never really a moment of discovery; I always knew he was from here). It's about equivalent to when I found out about Wedeen (I read her work before I knew she taught here). I'm crazy, I know.

Right on

I can't understand how anyone is confused---it's obvious to me that she's a woman. Then again, I live on a campus where I swear half the girls have short hair and a good number of them don't bother to femme up their clothes. It doesn't read as unfeminine to me; it's quite common.

I love that, by the way. I could tell, when we were at the ICCA afterparty at U of I, that a lot of people were taken aback by my lack of luxuriant tresses. I could see it in the boys' eyes--"I think you might be cute, but I'm really confused by the two feet of hair you don't have." I could see it in the girls' faces--"What does she think she's doing? Is she gay?" Even the way the guys who were interested in me were acting just seemed a little bit halting, a little odd; I was a strange creature, and they weren't sure how to approach me. In every way, my haircut marked me off from their ideas of normalcy, of attractiveness. I was Not Like Them, because for them it was important to look like everyone else. They succeeded--they all really did look the same. I encounter that odd sameness every time I visit another school, and I always find it bizarre. It always reinforces how glad I am to be where I am.

All the Voices girls talked about this the next morning, and we all felt the same way. Even though we don't all have short hair, we all have strong personalities that show in our appearances, and all of us stood out in the sea of long hair, eyeliner, babydoll tops and black stilettos as different. We were all happy to have it that way, even if those girls got more action than we did at that party. We know who we are and we love who we are, and we are all happy to have chosen an institution and a community that supports that and sees that as "normal." I was at a frat party on Friday where I had a long conversation about Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and international aid to Israel, and where a total stranger informed me that he liked that I had short hair because it was "different". That wasn't happening at any of the U of I frats that night.

I wouldn't have it any other way.